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night owl

C

cpit

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 2, 2009
27
0
So I'm a major night owl. Doesn't matter how insanely tired I am; I can't ever fall asleep before midnight, and with school being out for summer, I've been staying up until 4 AMish - ya know, when it starts getting lighter outside and the roosters start cocka-doodle-doing. It's just natural to me. I do all of my good thinking at night. So my schedule now is go to sleep at 4 AM, and wake up between 2 and 3 PM. And I feel wonderful.

That reminds me of how MISERABLE I am during the school year. To catch the bus, I have to wake up no later than 6 AM. I get home at 5:30, then have many many hours of homework. I'm miserable and tired all day until about midnight, when I can't fall asleep because I have a sudden burst of energy (this is without any caffeine whatsoever). So yea pretty much, to sum it up, I only get a few hours of sleep per night during the school year, and it's all just complete cycle of misery just because school starts soooooooo early. I just was thinking of how amazing life would be if school (and for later in my life, the work day) started in the afternoon. And adults seem to never understand - they always say "well, it's your fault for not going to sleep earlier."

What's your view on this? Any night-owls figure out a solution to the problem of living in a morning-bird society?
 
cpit said:
So I'm a major night owl. Doesn't matter how insanely tired I am; I can't ever fall asleep before midnight, and with school being out for summer, I've been staying up until 4 AMish - ya know, when it starts getting lighter outside and the roosters start cocka-doodle-doing. It's just natural to me. I do all of my good thinking at night. So my schedule now is go to sleep at 4 AM, and wake up between 2 and 3 PM. And I feel wonderful.

That reminds me of how MISERABLE I am during the school year. To catch the bus, I have to wake up no later than 6 AM. I get home at 5:30, then have many many hours of homework. I'm miserable and tired all day until about midnight, when I can't fall asleep because I have a sudden burst of energy (this is without any caffeine whatsoever). So yea pretty much, to sum it up, I only get a few hours of sleep per night during the school year, and it's all just complete cycle of misery just because school starts soooooooo early. I just was thinking of how amazing life would be if school (and for later in my life, the work day) started in the afternoon. And adults seem to never understand - they always say "well, it's your fault for not going to sleep earlier."

What's your view on this? Any night-owls figure out a solution to the problem of living in a morning-bird society?
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Well I work for myself and set my own hours, so it's easier to deal with now, but here was my solution:

Come home from school, hop straight in bed. Take a nap from when I got home until dinner time (3:30 to 8:00). After dinner, do my homework, whatever else needed accomplishing, back in bed between 2:00 and 3:00 to get up again at 6:00.

Was it ideal? Not really. But it was better than the alternative.
 
I stay up till 2AM on school nights and get up at 6 AM. I couldn't sleep at all. I was also busy doing bad stuff that ended up landing me in a mental hospital for 8 days. I just deal with it.
 
Once you get to a certain age, you start to feel guilty, even pathetic, waking up so late in the middle of the day...

So enjoy it while you can, you won't let yourself do that anymore in a few years.
 
I'm a night owl. I'm supposed to be in by 8:00, but my co-workers all know not to schedule anything until 8:30 or so. And 9:00 if they want me to be coherent.

I earn that ability through working late though. I let them all deal with early morning fires and I am there to make sure nothing obnoxious is happening at 5:30 or 6:00.

My best sleep is at 6:00-8:00, so it's really painful to have to be in by 8.

What I hate is all of the early morning people that don't think anything happens at 4:00 in the afternoon, or 7:00 PM, or 10:00 PM, or 1:00 AM. When I'm on call, I am more able to jump on stuff at midnight than my early morning co-workers who have been in bed for 2-3 hours already.
 
Same here. I work from home so my hours don't interfere with anything, plus my girlfriend and other friends are the same so it's not so bad.
In your position I'd just try shifting my sleeping times. I find skipping a nights sleep and then going bed at a new time will reset my clock. Even when I was at school I used to go to bed at 1-2am. Up at 7am. But I wasn't in a bad state I just took a nap when I got in from school and was charged for homework.
 
I've been this way as long as I can remember (even when I was a kid and had enforced bedtime I would lay in bed until my parents went away and pull out a flashlight to read in bed, and even younger my parent's called me the 'sleepless wonder' as a baby.)

I'm not an insomniac, in fact I really enjoy sleeping for 10 or 11 hours, those 10 or 11 hours just happen to be best had between 4am and 2pm. :D I usually find that most of my friends in college will be up until 1am or 2am, but I'm almost always guaranteed perfect peace and quiet between 3:00 and 4:00. Being a very social person I'm with friends and other people for the entire day and really need that hour when there's nobody awake to bug me, bother me or otherwise interrupt me....it gives me some time to kind of decompress and think freely. My mom is the exact same way however she gets her hour from 6 to 7am.

Since I'm in college I can pick afternoon classes (I almost always make it to early AM classes on time, however I'm so groggy I do poorly), however I live in fear of getting a job that starts earlier than 9am.

On that note I HATE mornings. Even if I can fall asleep at 9pm and get 9 hours of sleep before getting up at 6am I really don't like being awake that early. It feels uncomfortable. I'm never quite awake and it just doesn't seem right. :p
 
glad to know there are others out there like me ;)

I just got a coffee maker (the rest of my family doesn't drink it so we didn't have a working one). Maybe this will fix my problems.

I had 1 cup half an hour ago - it's 8:22 now and I'm feeling pretty good! That's a first.
 
yeah, waking up after 12pm is a waste of the day, and im saying that quite hypocritically as ive done it the last couple of days due to Uni break. i find theres nothing like getting 8 hours sleep and getting up before 8am.

if you cant get to sleep before midnight i suggest slowly going to bed earlier. to only way you will feel tired and get to sleep at this time is if its a routine… that is if you want to.
 
I see many saying that missing the morning is a waste of the day - what they fail to realize is that you (as you said) seem to get the most of the night. An hour is an hour - the only consequence is that you still have a 'Day' life. When you get out of school you can either do something for yourself where you can catch the later half of the business day and work into the night or find something that is 2nd - 3rd shift. I had the pleasure of working all shifts as a Network Admin - it really makes one appreciate the options. You definitely do notice later in life, though - the morning is a very respectable time of day if you're not dreading it.
 
My wife's a night owl and I'm a morning person myself. I start turning into a pumpkin around 10 and by 11:00pm I'm toast. I typically wake up around 5:00am in the summer. My kids seem to be for the moment morning people too, they wake up around 6:30am much to the chagrin of my wife.
 
cpit said:
glad to know there are others out there like me ;)

I just got a coffee maker (the rest of my family doesn't drink it so we didn't have a working one). Maybe this will fix my problems.

I had 1 cup half an hour ago - it's 8:22 now and I'm feeling pretty good! That's a first.
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Once you start it will never end. You will also start very quickly becoming picker about your coffee wanting higher quality better tasting coffee. For me now I only want fresh ground beans for my money java (or as I call it liquid sleep)

As for night owl welcome to the club. In college I would go to bed at 3-4am most nights and get up at 7am for class but I took naps through out the day. My last few years my day was get up at 7am. go to class. Afternoon nap 2-6 bed 3-4 AM repeat. I tried to avoid taking classes after 2 because I always would be ready to sleep about then so my ability to pay attention was pretty well shot. Problem comes after school the afternoon naps just did not work. I manage to make it to 1am most nights in before I got laid off and that took me a year to pull off. After being laid off in the 4 months that followed bed time moved until 4:00 AM or later and I would sleep until 10. Right now have I been working on moving it earlier in the day. Trick I found to help me fall asleep earlier is to go to bed around mid night and read a book. It helps calm my mind and fall asleep.
 
Yairp said:
Once you get to a certain age, you start to feel guilty, even pathetic, waking up so late in the middle of the day...

So enjoy it while you can, you won't let yourself do that anymore in a few years.
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I've already started feeling like that, and I'm only 16!

I wanna start changing my routine, so I woke up at half seven today! Shocking. I had an ulterior motive, but I'm hoping I'll be more tired tonight so I'll go to bed early and the system will work :D.
 
When I was younger I stayed up typically until about 3-4 in the morning; however, in recent years I had gotten back into a “normal” sleep pattern of going to bed by 11:00 or so. For some reason, in recent months, I’ve reverted back to my insomniac ways and I’ve been unable to go to sleep anytime before about 2:00 AM. I have to wake up for work at 7:30 and I feel free so I’m not sure it’s necessarily a bad thing just something odd that’s reemerged.
 
I'm a late night/early morning person. college screwed w/ my internal clock a bit...basically I'm boucing off the walls at 3am and ready to pass out around 6 pm. I guess it's not that bad but I need to work on bumping that time frame up a few hours haha
 
I wish they would invent a sleep replacement pill. If they mad one where you could get away with only two hours sleep I would be happy coz I could go to sleep at 1 am and then wake up at 3 am when its nice and quiet and cold(I like cold weather) and I also like being up before sunrise. At the moment in school holidays and on weekends I go to sleep at around 11-12:30 and get up at 8 or 9 but when I have school I go to sleep around 10:30 (Anytime before then just doesn't happen) and get up a 7 which is annoying.
 
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